She is reported to have been struggling to hold herself together and had been stockpiling food, water and guns in the large home she shared with her 20-year-old son in Connecticut.

Mrs Lanza, 52, was a ‘prepper’ – so called because they are preparing for a breakdown in civilised society – who apparently became obsessed with guns and taught Adam and his older brother, Ryan, how to shoot....

Lanza’s aunt Marsha said Nancy was ‘self reliant’ and that they talked a lot about how she was preparing for the economic meltdown....

As for her son, he was described yesterday as a ‘ghost’ – an autistic genius, according to former school fellows, but also a ‘deeply disturbed’ young man who was so withdrawn that even many of his closest relatives hadn’t set eyes on him for years.

Nancy Lanza failed at one of the most basic aspects of responsible gun ownership. She had no business keeping weapons in the same house as a troubled young man.

To give an example - it's fine for a single person to keep a loaded pistol in an unlocked drawer next to their bed for self-defense, but it's not okay to do so if one is a parent with small children in the house. Similar principle here. Context matters. She was partially responsible for this crime by indulging her gun nut survivalist fantasies with a crazy son in the house.

No comment, Althouse, on Obama, who's currently on TV, speaking at a memorial ceremony, and campaigning for gun control at that event?

I think that those who portrayed Obama as cynically faking his emotional response to the massacre are wrong. Obama was, essentially, abandoned by both his parents. Parenting has to be a central issue in his life.

Nobody could have anticipated he would do this. Sure, now it seems obvious, but there are many thousands like him, and we have no way of knowing which ones will do something like this and which ones will never do other than become artists or simply live quiet lives.

In fact, I would bet that every single mass murderer has a psychological doppelganger that is just like them in virtually every way except they never snap like this.

The only feasible answer is to be better prepared when they do. More controlled carry permits. Stringent requirements to get one, but more of them, and every school should have a number of staff members with them everyday they are open.

I would like to know that every time I'm in a crowd, that at least a few good people are qualified to carry a weapon and have it on them. I also want the crazed gunmen to have the same assurance.

"In the end there were 38 children dead at the school, two teachers and four other adults.

I’m not talking about the horrific shooting in Connecticut today. I’m talking about the worst school murder in American history. It took place in Michigan, in 1927. A school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, quietly planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary. Then, the day he was finally ready, he set off an inferno. When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, too, killing more people, including himself."

It neither explains his motivation nor his targets. The mother did not express her fatalistic perspective, other than implicitly through prudent planning to mitigate known and likely risks. The son did not run amuck. He expressed a controlled, focused aggression against select targets.

As for economic collapse, the risk is progressive. The federal government is running account deficits which principally devalue the currency and thereby the capital and labor which underlies its value. While this degenerate behavior poses a moderate risk in the foreseeable future, its primary consequence is a progressive uncertainty which sabotages our ability to properly assess and manage risk.

The belief that total societal breakdown is a possibility doesn't seem far fetched to me.

WWII was utter insanity. See the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg and the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The Nazi death camps. The complete collapse and self-inflicted genocide of Cambodia. The incredible self-immolation of the Soviet Union. The bizarre, endless purges and bloodlettings of Red China.

There's a lot of evidence out there within recent memory to suggest that such things are likely to happen again. Who knows when and where humanity will go completely mad again? I think we can count on it happening.

There is only so much you can do with a bad seed.Her other son is apparantly well-raised, well-adjusted and a rising star in a global corporate tax and accounting consultancy firm. Which don't really add up to a "poor mother" when you take both her kids in consideration.It happens in other families. Something the "nurture" over "nature" ideologues hate. Surely if 3 kids go on to professional success and respected and loved people and the 4th kid who was adopted is in jail for multiple rapes after dropping out of HS - there must be a "failure" by the parents..

We also have a little too much "narrative" today on the poor "mentally troubled" - and too little on how many of those mentally troubled are deficient as functioning, moral human beings. What kind of person could kill 20 kids? An autistic one - as autistics are noted for being unable to feel empathy or love for other humans..who could be rocks for all the "poor troubled autistic" cares except they know humans unlike rocks and trees, dish out rewards and punishments that require certain behavior. Otherwise, an autistic could care less if a person lives or dies and in general, are unmoved by other's plights. Also, the reason why autistic are generally friendless and shunned

True, but not sharing a house and a bunch of firearms with a bad seed is a good start. I like this part of your comment better: We also have a little too much "narrative" today on the poor "mentally troubled" - and too little on how many of those mentally troubled are deficient as functioning, moral human beings.

ARM says:Sounds like she would have fit in just fine here at Althouse blog.

Harsh, but not completely untrue, depending on the commenter. Sounds like Nancy and Dust Bunny Queen could have been sorority sisters.

The only one I could think of, was that he knew he was such a pathetic coward, he couldn't pick on someone his own size even with his ammo. If he try to murder random people at a gas station, he knew someone would be bigger then him to take him down. Which makes you wonder, that he really wasn't crazy considering he killed himself.

She was complicit in the fact that she had a fascination with guns, kept them in the same home she shared with a disturbed son and actually facilitated his proficiency in using the guns. That is not normal, or responsible.

Who knows what fears she exacerbated in her son with the breakdown of society scenarios she was stockpiling for, if that is true. I also read that no one was ever invited inside the home, she would always come out to meet friends.

Nobody could have anticipated he would do this. Sure, now it seems obvious, but there are many thousands like him, and we have no way of knowing which ones will do something like this and which ones will never do other than become artists or simply live quiet lives.

bagoh20 gets it.

Thirteen thousand Americans are intentionally murdered each year. If the aim is to save lives, we would be better off concentrating on the big numbers rather than the occasional killing of a dozen or two.

As Gerard Posner theorized in "Case Closed", the conspiracy theories came about in large part because people couldn't reconcile that a little smudge like Oswald could kill a president and not be a part of something more significant and sinister.

Along with rank opportunism, into that void went all negative fantasies about the political opponents of those who were alleging conspiracy.

Empathy. Those with Aspergers Syndrome, (which I believe it was said he suffered from), though they tend to be mentally acute, tend to lack an emotional connections to others, . They thus, make bad decisions in social situations, simply because they don't realize the emotional effects of their actions. Now. Take that person and isolate them, add some violent video games (where he can practice destroying his oppressors) and some denial from those around him and you get a very very dangerous situation.

I think living alone with such a disturbed son may have deepened whatever fissures were already in her personality. Folie a deux....It's just such staggeringly bad judgement instructing him in the use of firearms and giving him easy access to them......This is one of the most hateful crimes ever, but the people who did it are vague and unformed. They're too wispy to be proper villians. This should be the crime of an archfiend, not of a disturbed child and his fatuous mother. That such ineffectual people should inflict such lasting damage on so many people is another nightmare.

"...kept them in the same home she shared with a disturbed son and actually facilitated his proficiency in using the guns. That is not normal, or responsible."

Other than the failure to see the future or understand just how disturbed her son actually was, the worst possible thing that any parent can do, who chooses to have guns in the house, is to NOT train the children to use them safely. Even very young children should be taught to handle the weapon safely (same as kitchen knives) and when old enough to physically manage it, taught to shoot.

Aunt Marsha, who said Nancy was a "prepare," lives in Crystal Lake, Il. She was very happy to give a media interview, even though she admitted she had not seen Adam since he was 4 years old. Probably had not seen Nancy since then either, methinks. In other words she is a distant relative who rarely saw Nancy's family and had a email-facebook kind of relationship.

Not much of a source for such sweeping conclusion.

Of course there is her landscaper, who Nancy first me in a bar but would not invite into her house.

She was complicit in the fact that she had a fascination with guns, kept them in the same home she shared with a disturbed son and actually facilitated his proficiency in using the guns. That is not normal, or responsible.

I believe it's called shared culpability. Teaching a disturbed person how to use guns and allowing him access to guns is not a good survival tactic. If you must have guns around a person whom you can't trust 100%, keep the guns locked up in a safe with the combination not written down anywhere.

Renee - thanks for that link - I was trying to recall enough detail about that incident to do a Google on it - where the school board member blew up the new school.

In our city, a school building referendum was just passed - two of the school board members were against it. Note to myself - call local Police Department tomorrow and tell them they need to continuously monitor the movements of those two school board members - you can never be too safe at times like this, right?

THANKS Dianna for this link - it's been filling my inbox all day as I am an educator and - yes - this essay reminds of all - in a beautiful way - how parents of these shooters and future shooters need real help.

The people who say that it's not a "surprise" when someone shoots up a mall or theater or school or commit suicide... of course it's a surprise or they'd have tried to do something. There are odd people all around us, marginally functioning people, angry people... and almost to a person not a single one of them ever does anything truly bad. Nor do angsty, depressed people kill themselves.

And then someone does and it's all recriminations... they should have known that the angry, unhappy person was going to undertake the bloodiest possible suicide... or even just a regular suicide... and everyone should have known. Certainly the NEIGHBORS all knew it was about to happen so how could the parents, how could the mother not know?

This is all very stupid, but I suppose we're compelled to do it. Sort of like preppers, huh. Survivalists. Horders. We're compelled to figure out how to make ourselves safe by guarding against the unthinkable.

The difference being that this version of prepper paranoia can result in laws and oppression for people who are, oh, autistic, or unhappy, or who prepare for the fall of civilization without bothering anyone else in the least.

And not just the violent schizophrenic either. Everyone with AUTISM, anxiety, depression, OCD, ADD, Tourette’s, Drug and alcohol addiction, Anorexia/Bulemia, Any serious Phobia, and anyone who has panic attacks.

The only one I could think of, was that he knew he was such a pathetic coward, he couldn't pick on someone his own size even with his ammo. If he try to murder random people at a gas station, he knew someone would be bigger then him to take him down. Which makes you wonder, that he really wasn't crazy considering he killed himself.

Or in his sick, twisted, insane little world, he wanted to see what it really felt like to be the aggressor, rather than then victim. Children make for easy targets and what better place to get to them than a school where they are sitting ducks.

Killing children is indeed the ultimate revenge. It is an act which confiscates a man and woman's only expressive investment that transcends generations. An investment that requires up to twenty years or more of our lives to fully realize its potential. Assuming that human life, preservation of its dignity and value, is the goal, then there is no greater investment made by men and women during their lives. Everything else is tangential or contributory to this one goal.

Probably a total aside, but if she actually trained her kid in how to use the guns, it explains something that bugged me, which was how damned efficient he was. In most mass shootings you get a lot of dead people, but also a lot of wounded who survive.

phx, The gun he had was already illegal, since he was not allowed to have any legally. It was illegal to take a gun where he took it. And on a side note, it was illegal to shoot a bunch of children. There is no law that could have prevented this other than one that required the school staff to be armed. That would actually work, but do you think that's what will come out of this lesson?

Even if God came down on a surfboard and told us that's what we need to do, it would not happen, because we either don't really care enough, or we are too stupid as a group to really take the action needed. Instead we will do more of what does not work, and it will happen again and again. More children will die for simple political correctness - a foul business if there ever was one.

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.” ― William S. Burroughs

bagoh20 is correct - all the guns Lanza used were illegal in his hands. The one time Lanza tried to purchase a gun for himself, the law worked as intended and the purchase was denied because Lanza wasn't willing to wait 14 days.

It's possible the widespread legality of such guns has a negative influence on the culture apart from the immediate random mass shootings. I imagine there are ways of looking at the affect of advanced modern weaponry on our culture, is it making us violent?

I think that deserves to be talked about. I don't think anyone's saying making certain weaponry illegal or putting tighter restrictions on them is a panacea.

No matter what you do to protect yourself, even arming teachers, you aren't going to be totally safe. That doesn't mean you can't make saner decisions.

And your political leaders of both sides will again only be willing to do what has not worked, what will not work, and what assures more dead children. They will fight for that with great passion and rhetoric, and express all along their desire to protect those many innocents whom they doom in favor of another round of feckless hand wringing.

Protecting what you care about sometimes means you have to get off your cushy chair and hurt some bad guys, get your hands dirty, and break the illusion of a kumbaya utopia and accept that safety means a willingness to use violence when needed.

IF (and that's a big "if"—we're talking the Daily Mail here, jesus christ, Althouse, they're like the Enquirer of the UK, but I guess you'll link to anything you see linked on Drudge), this story about her being a "prepper" is true, it shows how any stupid assholes who reads World Net Daily can become a murderer. I hold Joseph Farah and his birther ilk just as responsible as the shooter himself and his deranged mother. Sick. All of them.

And not just the violent schizophrenic either. Everyone with AUTISM, anxiety, depression, OCD, ADD, Tourette’s, Drug and alcohol addiction, Anorexia/Bulemia, Any serious Phobia, and anyone who has panic attacks.

And, after that, we’ll get started on the retards.

Then, the physically deformed.

Then, the gypsies.

Then, … oh, you get the idea.

================Slippery slope arguments sound like sage wisdom to college students, but ultimately they are stupid and reductio ad absurdum arguments taken as gospel - used by people that have no argument against a present action. So without any facts, they then go into a factless ungrounded future to "prove the danger". Essentially do one thing they disagree with - like US troops killing terrorists - and they cannot argue on the right of terrorists to be free to butcher as they please - but hating the military they slowly pontificate that "once troops start killing, it is a slippery slope right to where the Americans are killing their own people or bayoneting babies - JUST LIKE THE NAZIS!!"

Its garbage.We have a problem with dangerous psychotics with access to guns and society sometimes even blocked by law from having parents or medical caregivers telling relevant others in authority about the menace.

One could argue that this quotation is more on the side of people who don't want to limit others' freedom.

As terrible as this incident is, note that, once again the crazy person performed his perfidy in a gun free zone. It's not accidental that homicidal nuts don't go to the police station to do their crimes. As the saying goes, they're crazy, not stupid.

As many people have pointed out... let's outlaw already illegal guns, that will solve the problem. Sure it will.

As for the notion that a culture of guns makes us violent, or video games, or violent movies, or whatever it is makes us violent... that's not even a given. Our communication is far better than it ever has been, of course. We even hear about the school massacre in China. Isn't technology grand?

Examine the tragedies that have occurred across the world and in countries with greater regulations and that don't have a "gun culture" at all. Hello, Norway? China?

So let's outlaw guns that are illegal and let's not bother our pretty little heads with deciding just where the line should be drawn between allowing guns at all, either hunting rifles or pistols or "automatics", because that's just too hard as there is no logical place to draw that line and I'd far rather emote the correct way in public than actually present what my "solution" would entail.

One could argue that this quotation is more on the side of people who don't want to limit others' freedom.

As terrible as this incident is, note that, once again the crazy person performed his perfidy in a gun free zone. It's not accidental that homicidal nuts don't go to the police station to do their crimes. As the saying goes, they're crazy, not stupid.

"Its garbage.We have a problem with dangerous psychotics with access to guns and society sometimes even blocked by law from having parents or medical caregivers telling relevant others in authority about the menace."

I would agree that it's a problem that someone deemed dangerous, even if only to themselves, who is clearly unwell, can not be institutionalized, at least not in any practical way.

But I do disagree about slippery slopes. I think that we ought to always be concerned with slippery slopes. If we change it so that it is easier for parents and judges to "commit" people who need to be committed, we need to be thinking about the slippery slope and try the best we possibly can to make sure that there are checks and balances and oversight and if it's no longer a case where someone has to commit murder before being "locked up" that we're not imprisoning people who are *grumpy*.

Hey Zach, since you think it's ok to blame some unrelated media figure for crimes that person didn't commit, then I'm going to blame you and your employers in the gay porn industry for the uptick in HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases!

Because if it does, my brake light started going on so I backed up and braked a bunch of times, and I know the fluid is fine. It stopped but it still blinks. Plus there's a rattle developed when stopped in drive at a light but not when in idle and it's bumming me out.

And also my brother said and my new mechanic agreed it really is true you should change your oil every three months whether or not you drive at all. I looked at the oil I have for my French fries and thought, you know, that does look pretty bad.

My gp doctor's office called and told me to come in a day apart from the new mechanic calling and telling me to bring the truck in, on account of the oil conversation. Is it normal for doctors and mechanics to boss people around like that?

If Mutaman refers to mechanic's union, can you answer these nagging questions please?

cryptical said...“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.” ― William S. Burroughs

Without objective standards there will be uncertainty and progressive dysfunction. However, despite this, I do suggest three classifications of behaviors: normalization, tolerance, and rejection. I implicitly recognize the emotional factor which influences, if not directs, many people's thinking process and actions. I recognize that both natural and artificial processes are chaotic. That is to say bounded with an intermediate behavior described by stochastic processes. It is the latter which models emotional responses, among other things, and ensures our lives remain "interesting."

Anyway, emotions are welcome. We are all human, and while that aspect of our nature is paradoxically helpful and harmful, it is also a defining characteristic of humanity and individuals. It is the irrational, variable component, which along with our rational, associative minds, makes us unique and defines authentic diversity.

The goal is to identify and enforce an optimally stable system. The challenge with dynamically stable systems is to ensure that the inherent and forced variability does not cause uncontrollable oscillations and lead it to its failure either marginally or in whole.

n.n said...It neither explains his motivation nor his targets. The mother did not express her fatalistic perspective, other than implicitly through prudent planning to mitigate known and likely risks. The son did not run amuck. He expressed a controlled, focused aggression against select targets.

As for economic collapse, the risk is progressive. The federal government is running account deficits which principally devalue the currency and thereby the capital and labor which underlies its value. While this degenerate behavior poses a moderate risk in the foreseeable future, its primary consequence is a progressive uncertainty which sabotages our ability to properly assess and manage risk

That just flew over the heads of every liberal on this site. Or as Robert Cook would aver, " That's just your opinion."

Pogo, I meant that Libertarianism is the best philosophy of governance that has any traction (as little as it does have) even if it provides no answers for what to actually do about the Adam Lanzas of the world.

Frankly, short of some dystopia where the state evaluates everyone's mental condition and doles out "rights" based on those evaluations, nothing would have caught that young man with his mom running interference for him (which I believe we can assume from the limited data we have.)

Inga: And in most of these cases, things are reported. The Va. Tech shooter? The bureaucracy failed us; in this case, yet again, the school failed those children by not providing adequate protection, either in the form of police or physical security.

Each time, the government fails us, and the solution is to write new laws we won't enforce to stop problems we won't admit to having.

Adam reminds me a bit of my brother. No one in my family has spoken to him for over twenty years. He wasn't a genus, but he was extremely smart. He ran away from home around the age of 16. He dropped out of school and got his GED, got a full ride scholarship to Purdue, but couldn't handle the social interaction. My Dad tried to get help for him repeatedly, but there just wasn't any help to be had especially back then.

He's been homeless off and on, I think the longest was for over a year. We've all tried at one time or another to help him, to talk to him, but he refuses all contact. I know it was only after he left that my parents began locking our doors at night. There was a feeling that he might come back and kill us all.

My sister did get him a job as a dough maker at Pizza Hut. It's perfect for him since it begins very early in the morning and he doesn't have to interact with to many people. The other employees are afraid of him though,. the early shift waitresses are especially uncomfortable, but he is good at his job, reliable, so the managers keep him on.

If he were ever to do something horrible, God forbid, I think many people who know him would say they weren't be surprised.

I know my brother sn't autistic, and I don't think Adam Lanza was either. I've been around plenty of autistic kids and they have a look in their eye that is hard to miss. At one time my brother was funny, extremely good looking, had tons of friends. Who knows what sent him off into such a lonely, isolated existence? He's about 53 now, never been married, no girlfriend, no kids. Just sad.

And Matthew, what's idiotic is having a disturbed son in the home with a mother who didn't understand the danger of keeping multiple weapons and actually teaching that disturbed son how to shoot them. Your analogy is also wrong, think for Christ sake, disturbed son, weapons , access, training, fear of some apocalyptic future, you wouldn't be able to see the handwriting on the wall?

And yet, the government completely and totally failed her every step of the way. Yet, instead of biting the bullet and accepting that the government needs to stop harping on unrelated issues, you decide to instead dig in and focus on whether or not someone has legally owned guns.

The issue is mental health. He needed help; instead, the solution seems to be to ignore that, and to lard up some more regulations that we'll completely ignore except for a few days after each tragedy.

The woman made a mistake; yet when a woman makes a mistake by walking through a bad neighborhood, we all agree it is bad form to tsk, tsk her for exposing herself to the danger of being raped. Be consistent and don't simply wait to demonize people for behaviors you dislike. Unless you -want- to be thought of as a hypocrite.

Phx: The government -is- failing these people. In almost every case, red flags that Pogo is talking about are raised and ignored. Each regulation, law and rule doesn't matter when the government is incompetent.

Matthew I understand what you are saying and I'm not defending incompetence. You are right, there are some incompetent bureaucrats out there.

But I also believe that even when red flags are raised there isn't always a clear-cut course of action that needs to be taken. Sometimes no matter what we do (or the government does) there's a serious risk involved.

I don't expect the government to fix this problem perfectly. I'd like them to get better at it, I'm sure we both do. But I also want to think about more restrictions on the availability of modern weaponry.

Phx: Then find a case where the modern weaponry are legally obtained and used. This man killed someone and stole their weapons; the Va. Tech shooter bought his weapons because, despite the government having him flagged as unable to buy them, didn't bother to complete the paperwork.

In each case, the government failed and so we have no idea if our restrictions would work, were they applied correctly.

Then again, reports currently say she had 5, 4 or 3 weapons registered to her, with her husband having anywhere from zero to 2, so, it may be preemptive to assume where he got the weapons from. In addition, ABC, at least, says the rumors that she took him shooting are unsubstantiated at this time.

As of yesterday: "Investigators have also learned his mother, Nancy Lanza, visited a gun range on multiple occasions, but they have not determined whether her son was with her during those visits, the spokesperson said."

Also as of last night: "FNC’s Mike Tobin reports that Adam Lanza had visited a gun range as well. There is no confirmation that Nancy Lanza took her son to the gun range or that he fired a gun while he was there. It is also not confirmed whether they were there together."

So... the fact he went there, and she didn't bring him there, and that he may not have even fired a shot while there, has been transformed into the hysterics we see in this thread, unless, again, there's something more recent.

Also, believe it or not, using a loaded gun doesn't take a lot of skill at very close ranges against people who can't fight back. Lanza -may- have been taught to shoot. But we don't know yet. So, it would be wise to hold off until you know, lest you end up looking foolish jumping to conclusions.

Inga: You asked a stupid question. The shooter was not doing any feats of amazing skill. He walked into an undefended building filled with defenseless people and children and began shooting. It's horrific and terrible; he had all the time in the world. This is the reality of what happened; even if he -did- spend time at a range, it wouldn't have mattered in this scenario.

Except, I'm not. I'm explicitly saying that we aren't even using our currently existing regulations and resources. If we had, the Va. Tech shooter would never have been able to legally arm. I'm fine for supporting things that will work; simply making guns harder for citizens to get, however, has done nothing to stop these mass killings. Enforcing existing laws is hardly a libertarian wet dream.

Also, are these types of shootings common in inner cities where guns are prevalent, or are they just in safe, white enclaves where people have fooled themselves into thinking that a gun-free zone makes them safer?

Inga, it might be educational to find out WHEN she took him to range. If it was in the last couple of months thats one thing. If it was several years ago thats entirely different. Oh, and knives, revolvers and bolt action rifles are also "weapons of war".

We have a lot of empirical evidence over the past 4 decades to know that these types of incidents are mostly carried out by a specific type of person ... young, white males detached from society in one form or the other.

So, we can ban guns, but what then will young white males detached from society turn to in order to exact revenge?

Inga, unfortunately you derailed your back and forth with this blatantly ignorant statement.

We don't have all the facts as of yet so uninformed opinions are rampant, but it would appear that this evil soul was mentally ill and had a mother that liked guns. The fact that the mother couldn't see the trouble with having both is a major part to this awful tragedy.

"Great shot" my *ss. What happened is the kids froze in an enclosed space. He just had to stand in doorway then point and shoot since the range was under 20 feet. Which also explains multiple hits on the bodies since range was so close most rounds would pass thru. And since no one else was armed he had several long minutes of shooting. If we were serious about addressing this issue like Israel, a couple of teachers would have been armed so he wouldn't have gotten to the second classroom. Cut the death toll in half. might have prevented him from entering the first classroom; Maybe not.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but how long was Lanza at the school before any police got there?

I'm not sure the answer to that but I did see a timeline saying that from the point the first call came in to the confirmation the killer was dead was just over twenty minutes. So it happened pretty fast if that's true.

I understand what Matthew is saying, but isn't it strange how many here were saying what a great shot he was only yesterday?

Can you identify these people. There were a lot of posts and a lot of comments over the weekend. Were they folks you have seen comment here regularly? This is a callous statement that seems to fit your preconceived notions of gun rights advocates rather than something someone would say in response to this horrible tragedy.